NodeXL Exchange Spigot: Extract social networks from enterprise email

The widely used Microsoft Exchange email server contains many networks that are created as people reply to one another and join various groups and distribution lists.

A new NodeXL data provider (“spigot“) is now available to extract these social networks from Exchange servers.

This is the Exchange Spigot for NodeXL a configurable interface for defining and executing a query against a Microsoft Exchange email server designed to be used with NodeXL.

NodeXL is an easy to use add-in for the familiar Excel spreadsheet that adds support for network overview, discovery and exploration. The free and open NodeXL project has several import data providers that extract and display networks from popular social media network repositories like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, the WWW and more.

By adding an Exchange Spigot to your installation of NodeXL you gain a simple way to extract networks from your own email stored on an Exchange server. With appropriate permissions and in compliance with local and legal requirements, the Exchange Spigot can access email and extract social network data across multiple email user accounts.

If available, Active Directory metadata is integrated with email data extracted from the Exchange server. Profile metadata is added to the network workbook when available (typically only for email from other employees, not people from outside your company or division).

The Exchange Spigot for NodeXL is one of several related projects to provide a connection between valuable sources of network data structures and the easy-to-use network browser, NodeXL. Additional projects have implemented connections to web crawlers, Facebook, and soon, SharePoint.